


state of emergency

by ocelot



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Introspection, rivamika
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-27
Updated: 2014-02-27
Packaged: 2018-01-13 22:35:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1243039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ocelot/pseuds/ocelot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Levi takes on the responsibility of informing Mikasa that their past Titan kills were quite possibly acts of manslaughter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	state of emergency

His words were a cancer eating her from the inside. Mikasa didn’t look at him. Her hands were balled into fists and she shook from her toes to her bony fingers. She was afraid she’d hit him.  

“Mikasa, look at me.”  

She wanted to break something and it might as well have been his face.

Levi stilled her.   

He didn’t love her. No. It wasn’t that easy, but he did care about her. His hand was on the hollow of her back and her forehead brushed against the scratchy stubble of his chin.

She could feel his pulse, thrashing under pale skin and sinewy muscle.  

It was harder to be kind in this world – harder to smile, harder to be soft, harder to hold a hand (than to break it.)

Cold hands and colder heart.

The rain was a steady plop against the window and the wine had gone bad.     

Her short black hair framed her red smile. The corners of her mouth drawn up like that only made her eyes look sadder, disjointed, detached from the rest of her features. Her face was like a cracked porcelain doll.

“So?” Her voice was barely there, swallowed by the outside world and their own demons.       

“What difference does it make? They were trying to kill us.”

She killed a man before and she’d kill again.    

They died to themselves. To their idea of who they thought they were. And all that was left was fragments, ugly bits that cut at them.

“Come to bed with me?” It wasn’t a question. At least not one he could say no to.

Only their mouths were lying that night.

She shifted in her sleep, twisting the sheets and gripping his arm. Her nails dug into his skin. She pulled the blanket off of him leaving him in the cold.   

Mikasa didn’t remember her dreams, but she always remembered her nightmares. Levi kissed her salty skin and combed her ratty, sweat matted hair out with his fingers.  

Death didn’t come for them. It came for their loved ones, for their childhoods, their homes, their souls.

It left them empty. Like itself.

Perhaps death was lonely. It had as much right to play house as they did.

They didn’t get the luxury to die or to fall in love or the time to grieve.

Underneath there skin was the biggest sin: the will to survive.

It wasn’t the strong who survived. It was the cruel.

It took them a long time to come to terms with who they were and what they’d done.

They didn’t need forgiveness or redemption. They needed peace. He gave her that or at least he tried to.

Without her all his dreams went dark.


End file.
